


let this winter pass on by

by glorious_spoon



Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [44]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 20:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20880503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: He was as cold as a corpse by the time she pulled him out of the river.





	let this winter pass on by

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).

> For a prompt that asked for Peggy & Jack, keeping the other person warm.

“Carter?” Jack said thickly. “The hell are you doing?”

“You’re hypothermic,” Peggy said, batting his fingers away to continue unbuttoning his shirt, the fabric crackling and stiff where it had frozen against his skin. “I’m warming you up.”

The flesh beneath his shirt was so icy and pale that he nearly looked like a corpse. He nearly had been, when she’d pulled him out of the frozen river. He still might die if she couldn’t get him warmed up, and the chill of that thought carried her through what would have otherwise been the mortifying process of stripping him out of his half-frozen clothes. Jack blinked at her slowly, then slurred, “How’s takin’ m’ clothes off gonna warm me up?”

“They’re frozen solid, they’re not doing you much good right now.” She peeled his undershirt off as well, the thin fabric damp and chilly in her hands. There was a dark bruise spreading across his chest, wrapping around to the side under his arm. He probably had at least one cracked rib on top of all of the rest of it. It was going to be a hideously uncomfortable night on the floor of the hunting cabin, the straw-tick mattress in the only bed having long since been scattered by mice and assorted other vermin, leaving only chewed fabric in its wake. At least the fireplace still worked, and there’d been dry wood inside. There was a haze of smoke in the air, but the temperature had slowly started to climb.

Too slowly. She untied Jack’s boots and tugged them off, wincing at the frostbite blisters beginning to form on his toes. His belt was stiff and frozen as well, and he didn’t even make a single snide quip when she fumbled with it for a full minute before getting it undone. Peggy chafed his arm briefly, and grimaced when he flinched. “Don’t go to sleep.”

“M’not,” Jack mumbled. Then, “Why’re you taking my clothes off?”

“I’ve just told you. I’m warming you up.” It wasn’t easy to manhandle a grown man out of his trousers, especially since he wasn’t coordinated enough to help even if he could understand what she was doing, but eventually she managed it. She left his undershorts on as a sketchy nod to the dignity they were both about to lose and pulled the one dry sleeping bag over him. The other one, which had been in Jack’s pack when he went into the river, was spread out on the hearth and steaming faintly as the stone beneath it warmed. Jack blinked up at her with the air of a man who wasn’t completely sure he was actually conscious as she yanked her own boots off, then stripped efficiently down to her skivvies, leaving her wet clothes in a heap on the floor.

He was so cold when she crawled in next to him that it was like trying to snuggle with a corpse; every instinct screamed at her to flinch away, but she gritted her teeth and pressed close, pulling his chilly body toward her until they were pressed together, chest to chest, her leg hooked behind his knee. It would have been, under any other circumstances at all, a horrifically uncomfortable intimacy, but right now Peggy was too concerned by the clumsy immobility of his body, the cold huffs of his breath against her cheek and his slow, shallow pulse. He wasn’t shivering at all, and that was a bad sign.

“Come on,” she murmured. “Jack, I need you to stay awake, come on. I haven’t dragged your heavy, sopping carcass halfway across the wilderness just for you to up and die on me.”

No response. She rubbed her hands up and down his back, trying to stimulate blood flow. Trying to pull him closer, although her entire front felt as chilled as if she was lying face-down on a block of ice. The fire popped and belched more smoke into the room, and Peggy decided that she’d be perfectly happy to blame that for the way her eyes were burning. Not the way that Jack was so limp against her, his bruised face slack, his eyes mostly shut and clearly not tracking much of anything. His frostbite-blistered hand lay outside the sleeping bag, and she tugged the scratchy wool back up over him, pulling him closer. The ice in his hair was finally melting, leaving damp smears against her neck and shoulder.

“Come on,” she said again. “Wake up.”

She rubbed a hand over his back again, then pinched him sharply. He twitched a little, started to lift his head, then dropped it down again. His hair straggled wetly across his forehead; his eyes blinked open, dazed. “Peggy?”

“That’s it.” She swallowed back a lump of something that was assuredly not tears. “That’s it. Stay awake.”

Jack made a soft, pained sound and twitched against her. For a moment, she thought he was trying to pull away, and then another shudder rolled through him and she realized that he was shivering, awful, bone-rattling shivers that were still a sight better than that deadened immobility. She held onto him, rubbing her hands up his back, into his damp hair and then back down again as he shuddered against her. His breath was warmer though, some color seeping back into his face. Eventually, he pulled back slightly and peered at her, then mumbled, “Th’ hell are you doing, Carter?”

“You’ve already asked me that,” she retorted, gripping his shoulder when it seemed like he might try to pull back farther. Shivers were still rolling through him, but his skin was starting to warm. It was less like cuddling an ice block and more like cuddling a very chilly bedmate, right down to the cold toes pressed against her calf. Frost-bitten toes, she remembered. They’d be hurting once he got the feeling in them back, if they weren’t already. “Twice.”

Jack huffed against her cheek; it took a moment for her to realize that he was laughing, shaky and ragged. The tense, tightly coiled fear in the back of her throat loosened a little, then dissipated entirely when he said, “Can’t wait to see the look on Sousa’s face when he walks in on this.”

“Very funny,” Peggy sniffed, but she was smiling as she pulled him closer, shivers and all.


End file.
